“But why did you bring me here?” she protested. “Why do you tell me these dreadful things?”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “I brought you here to satisfy your curiosity. My father will tell you much more horrible things than that. His book is full of them.”
“Let us go!” she said, shuddering. “I won’t come here again.”
“As you wish,” he said. “There are certainly pleasanter places.”
He helped her back into the cart, and wrapped the rug about her knees. As he did so, with his face turned from her he spoke again in a tone that affected her very strangely.
“Miss Thorold, I haven’t told you everything. There is a much more modern tragedy connected with this place which I haven’t told you of. It isn’t a subject that is ever mentioned among us, and I can’t go into any details. But—you’ve probably discovered by this time that there is something that makes us different from the rest of the world. It is—that.”
He spoke with an effort, and for the first time in all her knowledge of men there came to Frances that tender, motherly feeling that comes to every woman when she is face to face with a man’s suffering.
She sat for a moment or two without moving or speaking; then she put out a hesitating hand and touched his shoulder. “I am sorry,” she said very gently.
He drew in his breath sharply, but still he did not look at her. “I have never spoken of it to anyone outside before. But you are somewhat different. You have been through the mill, and you are capable of understanding?”
“I hope so,” she said.